


All The Best

by Catchclaw



Category: James Bond (Craig movies)
Genre: Birthday, Blow Jobs, Declarations Of Love, M/M, Memories, Retirement, The Past and What Comes After
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-22
Updated: 2019-10-22
Packaged: 2020-12-31 07:28:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,185
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21115478
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Catchclaw/pseuds/Catchclaw
Summary: Spies don’t have birthdays. At least not proper ones.





	All The Best

Spies don’t have birthdays. At least not proper ones.

They can be born on any day that they’d like, according to their documents. In the past year alone, Bond had had a dozen passports, a handful of driver’s licenses, even a library card, once--all mission critical, all listing a different date of birth, none of them actually his. 

When he was younger, he’d found it easy to set aside any knowledge of the day; it came and went in Shanghai, in Petrograd, in Santiago, and in a North Korean prison, once, without it causing so much as a tic in his mind. Some years, he was trying too hard not to die to waste any energy on remembering his birth; in others, he was trying to live to the edges of good sense and back before the very real possibility of his own death reached out to grab him again.

Once, though, he’d been under a woman in Miami when the appointed hour struck and he’d grinned up at her, swept her dark hair back from her face and whispered: “It’s my birthday, love.”

She’d chuckled. “Is it really?”

“Mmmm.”

She’d done something exquisite with her hips and he’d found himself dug deeper, beautifully crushed by the velvet weight of her cunt. “Tsk tsk,” she’d hummed against his cheek, her teeth catching the heat of his mouth. “I should’ve made you wait to open your present, hmm?”

Ah, he thought as he slipped into M’s private lift and let it read his eye print, pressed the button for that loftiest of floors. Yes. That was one worth remembering. 

As the years passed, though, the date got harder and harder to forget. Being (officially) dead for a bit hadn’t helped. Returning to the land of the living, to the stone hands of duty, of the work, of the one thing in his life he felt he’d ever enjoyed--that hadn’t, either.

And now look at him. He was half a step from an old man.

He kept his hair clipped short but the effect was still more silver than blond. His shoulders ached in the morning, his knees after even the most pedestrian workout. It’d been ages since he’d taken anybody to bed. For the last six months, M had been slipping the word “retirement” into ostensibly casual conversation at regular intervals. Bond had ignored these hesitant salvos and reached instead, always, for his prowess, his gun.

That had always been an option. Against all reason, he hoped it would be today.

Most of his fellow 00s, he couldn’t help but notice, now looked like they’d just stepped out of uni: freshly scrubbed and with steel in their eyes. They carried themselves through the halls with such confidence, he thought, the sort that was born of good training, inexperience, and bodies unscarred by the weapons of duty. The faces he passed in the halls these days were those of people who knew how to pull a trigger but hadn’t had to turn the barrel towards someone they’d come to care about, despite everything. These children of the River House had never killed someone they loved. They thought they could use people, manipulate them, wring them dry of necessary information and then set them aside like so many Starbucks cups in the bin, walk away from each mission untouched.

He’d been like that once, long long ago. Hadn’t he?

He sighed and rubbed his eyes, the point of tension between them. God, it’d been so goddamn long.

He was 55 now, as of 4:04 that morning, and the significance of that particular number couldn’t be argued with, couldn’t be changed, unless he was willing to settle for something less than a 00. He wasn’t. So to the dustbin he was destined, over, as they say, and out.

Oh, M had chucked a half dozen trial balloons his way--station chief of this, head of mission of that--and Bond had popped each by changing the subject or pointing out some new wrinkle he’d noticed in the mission prep. It wasn’t terribly subtle; he’d gotten some side eyes from the up-and-comers in the room. Even Q, who should have bloody well known better, had acted surprised.

“It’s not an insult, what he’s offering. Surely you can understand that.”

Bond had grunted and leaned over to catch the bedside lamp. “I can. Doesn’t mean I have to like it."

“I’m not suggesting you send him a damn thank you note.” Q turned towards him, the smooth of his chest cool now against Bond’s arm. “I’m simply suggesting you not sneer at the man, that’s all.”

“I don’t sneer.”

Q had poked him in the side, hard. “Oh yes, you do. How you don’t lose your shirt the second you walk into a casino, I've no idea. You’ve got absolutely no poker face.”

“Yes, I do.”

“No, you don’t.”

Bond had swept his arm up and pulled Q in close, buried his nose in that great mess of hair. It smelled of sweat and spend, of the sandalwood shampoo Q had nicked from his shower. “Pfft,” Bond said. “You’ve had time and energy to catalogue my every tell, that’s all.”

“I’ve alphabetized them,” Q said with a sigh. He kissed the line of Bond’s jaw. “And indexed them in order of frequence and severity. I’m working on a cross-reference. With pictures.”

Bond stroked the curve of Q’s back. “Are you now?”

“No.” A yawn, a sound not unlike a low purr. “But you’re making me think that I should.”

“Why waste your time, hmm? In a few months it’ll be obsolete.”

“Maybe,” Q said softly. He’d scratched his nails over the thud of Bond’s heart. “But you won’t be.”

Now, on the way to his inevitable end, Bond tipped his head back against the wall of the lift and tried to make himself believe that.

By the time the car stopped, he hadn’t.

*****

He knew for sure the game was up the second he saw Eve’s face.

“Go on in,” she said, the corners of her mouth drawn down, betraying her smile. “He’s ready for you.”

There was a time when Bond would have answered with a smirk and a flirt: _ The more interesting question, Moneypenny, is: are you? _

There was a time when she’d have rolled her eyes and told him to go fuck himself; he’d had his chance, hadn’t he, in Macao?

And then they’d have smiled at each other, recalling the pleasures of that long-ago night, and he’d have pushed through the leather door with a hint of that smile still on his face.

But today, he didn’t smirk and neither smiled and he ducked through the door with a grim expression that he expected to match that of his boss, the Right Honorable Gareth Mallory. It did not.

“Bond,” M said with a wholly unbecoming bit of cheer in his voice. “There you are.”

“Sorry if I’m a bit late, sir.”

M waved his hand around. It stirred the pipe smoke above his head into a tizzy. “Late? You? Of course not. Right on the top of the hour, as always. Sit. Sit.” He pushed a glass of whiskey across the desk. “Have a drink.”

Bond knew what was coming. He drank.

“You’ve given this country many years of fine service,” M said.

“Yes.”

Mallory leaned back, comfortably officious. “And there’s no question that as an asset, you’ve been unparalleled. I’m not the only one with that opinion.”

Bond did his best not to flinch. Jesus, the man was laying it on thick. “Thank you, sir.”

“But.” M set down his pipe. “We can’t forget what today is, can we?”

“Apparently not.”

“There are rules about this sort of thing, Bond. You know that. Even if you’d aced your physicals last month--which you most certainly did not--we’d still be having this conversation.”

“I know.”

Mallory sighed and pushed the decanter towards him; Bond took it and poured out another long splash. “I’ve been asked to offer you the chance to stay on in an advisory role, if you’d like. There’d be a title and desk almost as impressive as this one. A Moneypenny of your own sitting outside of your door.”

It wasn’t even a question; M knew that. Still, Bond tried to make it sound as though he appreciated the gesture “No, sir,” he said. “I’d be of no use to anyone there, least of all myself.”

“I know that.” M took a sip of his own. “But Her Majesty insisted I ask. You should’ve seen the PM’s face when she did.” He chuckled. “Like she’d just told him to shovel out a latrine.”

“The PM,” Bond said, because it was over, because now he could, “wouldn’t know which end of a fucking shovel is up, much less what to do with it.”

M chuckled. “He damn well can’t stand you, James. Believe me, if there was some way to keep you in the field, I would, just to piss him right off.”

“Is he as much of a tosser as he seems on telly?”

“Oh god,” M said. “More.”

It was quiet for a moment, the air filled with more smoke and the sound of glass meeting bottle.

“So,” M said far too gently. “What will you do?”

“Go home and get fucking drunk,” Bond said, blunt. “That’s as far into the future as I’ve gotten.”

M nearly asked about Q then. Bond could see the question; it was plain as day on his face. But when Bond caught his eye, he thought better of it. Cleared his throat instead and said: “That’s as good a place to start as any, I suppose.”

Bond stood. The world felt unsteady. “I suppose this is good-bye, Mallory.”

“I suppose it is.” A chair pushed back, a hand extended. “I’m glad to have known you, Bond. All the best.”

When he stepped out, Eve was waiting. She took his gun and his IDs and wiped him from the building-wide Ident system as he watched. 30 years of his life, gone. Just like that.

She looked up from the machine. “I’ll walk you out.”

“No thanks.”

He could see her smarting. “You’ll need an escort. Would you rather I ring the on-call duty officer? Or should I call--?”

He stopped her. That wasn’t happening; they'd discussed this. This was his swan song, not Q’s.

“Fuck the on-call,” he said, aiming for jovial and extending his arm. “Walk me out.”

In the garage, she embraced him, the smell of her body spicy sweet, and when she pulled back, she kissed him on the mouth and then on both cheeks. “Don’t be a stranger, Bond,” she said. “Or become a goddam hermit. Don’t go and get lost somewhere in the world and never let us hear from you again.”

“Now what on earth makes you think I’d do that? That he’d let me?”

She shoved at him and shook her head, smiling, ignoring the water on her cheek. “I imagine you can be pretty persuasive when you put your mind to it, eh?”

He opened his arms and she stepped back, smoothing her blouse into place. He got in his car and turned down the window. “Good bye, Eve.”

She raised a hand. “Happy birthday, James.”

When he looked back in the rearview before he turned the corner, she was already gone.

*****

Bond drove home. He didn’t remember doing it. But there he stood on the doorstep, keys in hand.

His topcoat hit the hallway and his suit landed in a pile next to the bed; denim and cashmere took their place. He padded into the front room without flipping on the lights and turned on the grate, found a chair. And the scotch.

He’d had ages to prepare for this moment, for the reality of this instant, this day. But he’d never let himself belief that circumstance and dumb luck would ever conspire to allow it to arrive and now that he was here, that the door to his past was being shoved closed--what the hell should he be thinking? What the hell would he do?

He thought back of the colleagues he’d started out with and made the mistake of counting how many had survived. 

He thought of M, she who had brought him to heel and shaped him to be sharper than the rest. That was a mistake, too.

He thought of Vesper. 

He poured another drink.

The streetlights were on behind the curtains when he startled at keys in the lock, at the shuffle of familiar feet.

“James.” Q’s voice rang in the darkness. “It’s me.”

“I know it’s bloody you. Who the fuck else would it be?”

Q’s head appeared in the doorway. “No one who’d come unarmed, I'm guessing."

“No,” Bond said into his glass. “Definitely not.”

When he edged fully into the circle of light, Q was wearing an indefatigable expression, one like he’d worn through the first years of their acquaintance: as if he were unsure whether to take Bond seriously, or not. Bond didn’t care for it.

“What the hell are you doing here?” he said sharply. "We talked about this, Q.”

“No, you talked and I said nothing. It’s not my fault you took my silence as acquiescence.”

Damn it. “We _ agreed._”

“No,” Q said again, “you made a loud declarative statement and I chose not to respond, which you interpreted as me agreeing with your idiocy; I didn’t. I don’t. So. Here I am.”

Bond glared. “Here you are and there you go, just as easily. You know the way out.”

Q crossed his arms, a skinny bulwark in a tattered wool coat. “You shouldn’t be alone tonight, James.”

“But I want to be.”

The words came out quieter than he’d meant them to; softened, he supposed, by the slurry weight of the drink and the hint of skin at Q’s throat. The man was still wearing his muffler, for god’s sake.

“Do you?”

“Yes. No. I don’t--” There was a well of something old in his throat. He swallowed hard until he could speak. “I don’t want to talk about it. I don’t want to talk about any goddamn thing.”

The tips of cold fingers brushed at his face. “All right.”

“I don’t want to _ think_, Q. I can’t, it’s not…”

Q made a soft sound that echoed over the thud of Bond’s heart. “You don’t have to. It’s all right.” His hand turned under Bond’s jaw. “Why don’t you sit back and finish your drink?”

There were fewer sights in Bond’s life that had undone him quite as neatly, as completely, as Q unwinding himself from his coat in the firelight; his scarf next, his ridiculous, muddy-colored jumper. A moment later, his boots. 

“Q. What are you doing?”

“Tsk.” A flick of the wrist and an imperious grin; the setting of his spectacles on the mantelpiece. “Shut up and drink.”

There was ice in his teeth when he felt Q’s hands on his knees, heard Q slide down to his, and then there was the heat of Q’s mouth.

“Shhh,” Q murmured as Bond said something senseless and tugged his hair. “Don’t worry. It’s your birthday, dear. I won’t make you wait.”

He split Bond just enough to reach him and somehow, that made Bond hotter than the whiskey: looking past his glass and seeing himself framed between Q’s hands and stretches of denim, shivering and stretching out of the dark.

“I want you.” He was startled by his own voice, the bowstring of it, and he said it again when Q turned his face up, those sharp eyes gone golden and soft.

“I can see that.”

He touched Q’s cheek. Ice rattled in his glass. “I mean it.”

“I know you do.” Q’s breath was warm on his shaft. “I’ve never doubted it.”

There was a retort to be had there, somewhere, but Q ducked his head and Bond lost the thread. _ Yes _ was the best he could manage. For in the firelight, in the waning hours of Bond’s birthday, there was nothing beyond the sweet chase of whiskey, the feel of crystal in his hand, the low, steady suck of Q’s mouth.

He moaned and Q did; Q shuddered and Bond did, too, his hand catching hard in dark curls damp with the first hints of winter, the promise of cold yet to come. But in his grip, winter melted and in Q’s mouth, the press of his palms inside of Bond’s thighs, he could feel the promise of summer, a new life ahead, spring.

His balls ached and there was sweat on his lip, in his hair. There was still whiskey left in the glass.

“Don’t stop,” he said. His hand tightened on Q’s head. He closed his eyes. “Fuck, darling, don’t stop. God, please, fuck me, don’t.”

Then the words wouldn’t stop coming out of him; daft words, silly words--ones meant for the young who still held the future, not for an old man. But he couldn’t stop himself. Maybe it was the liquor, the heat, the weird pressure of the day.

Mallory's words, suddenly:_ All the best_.

Pleasure poured down his spine and his hips lifted, his lips parted:

“I love you,” Bond said into the starlight. “Jesus god, I love you.”

And when he came, there were more stars, thousands of them, fanning themselves out in circles in the lazy shapes of a flame.

Then Q was in his lap panting and the glass tumbled to the carpet, empty of amber at last.

“Touch me,” Q said against his mouth, feeding Bond his own bitterness. “James, please, fucking _ fuck._”

Bond smiled and rubbed it against the hot line of Q’s throat, the pound of that stubborn heart. “Yes, love,” he said simply. “Yes.”

*****

“So,” he said into the quiet, much later, when the city was sleeping and they were sprawled out in the heart of his bed. “I’ve never told you that, have I?”

He felt Q go still. They both knew what he meant. 

“No,” Q said, very carefully. “You haven’t.”

“Hmm.”

“Well, er...was a novelty, then? A one-off in the midst of me-shaped bliss?”

“Not hardly.”

Q pushed up and blinked into Bond’s eyes, off balance. “Oh,” he said.

“Does that surprise you?”

“No. I just”--Q's cheeks flushed in the lamplight--“I never thought the day would come when I’d hear it, I suppose.”

It was after midnight now, or so the bells of Westminster said. His old life, he thought, tracing the curve of Q’s ear, was well and truly gone. And for the first time in a long time, there was a possibility in the new day that hadn’t been there before.

He touched Q’s lips. “Spies don’t get things like this, darling. That’s why I couldn’t say it.”

Q kissed his fingers and dipped his head, licked into the curve of Bond’s mouth. “I’ve got good news for you, then,” he murmured. “Maybe you’ve heard it.”

“Mmm? What’s that?”

A long, searing grin. “James, my dear, you’re retired.”


End file.
